Ethiopian Army: ‘We can join Tigray within a week if necessary’ | Eritrean News

Federal forces left the region to face threats from “outside people,” a government spokesman says.

Ethiopia has said its army could re-enter the capital Tigray in Mekelle if it is needed for a few weeks, repeating over and over again that a unilateral ceasefire in Addis Ababa earlier this week was intended to provide “humanitarian aid” to the calming region.

On Wednesday, Redwan Hussein, a spokesman for the Ethiopian government’s working group for Tigray, made the first remarks made by any Ethiopian federal government official since Mekelle was arrested by Tigrayan forces this week.

After the retreat, the Tigrayan forces were the subsequent gains of the territories fighting the Ethiopian government and its allies, including troops around Eritrea and fighters in the Amhara region of Ethiopia bordering Tigray in the south.

“Ethiopia is under the influence of an outside attack” due to the conflict, Redwan said in a reference to reporters apparently in Sudan.

‘No more threats’

Lieutenant General Bacha Debele also told reporters that the Ethiopian army had left Mekelle in front of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) to prepare for other non-rebel threats.

“TPLF is no longer a threat, but we have (a) more national threats that we need to shift our attention to,” Bacha told reporters.

On Tuesday, TPLF spokesman Getachew Reda said the ceasefire statement was a “joke”.

Getachew described the ceasefire as a “political decision taken for humanitarian reasons.”

“If necessary, we can easily get into Mekelle and get there in less than three weeks,” he said.

The TPLF, an ethnic-based political party that has dominated Ethiopia’s national policy for nearly three decades, has been fighting the central government since early November. He made big territorial gains last week.

The rapid turnaround in the nearly eight-month war has put people in an effort to understand what is happening in the region of six million people, as communications links have been greatly diminished.

No negotiations will be held with Ethiopia until services that have been cut or destroyed in communications, transportation and other services for much of the war, Getachew told the Associated Press on Wednesday.

“We need to make sure that every inch of our territory is returned to us, the rightful owners,” Getachew said, adding that Ethiopian forces are still fighting to reclaim the territory and Eritrean forces still control “a significant portion” of the region.

A Tigray spokesman warned Isaias Afwerki, the longtime president of Eritrea, who had long been an enemy of Tigray leaders and had sent troops to Tigray to help Ethiopian forces.

Witnesses have denounced some of the worst atrocities in the conflict to Eritrean soldiers. “We will do everything in our power to prevent Isaiah from being a threat again,” Getachew said.

Eritrean officials, described by human rights groups as one of the most repressive nations in the world, have not responded to requests to respond.